Paradox
by iamtheletter13
Summary: Lex Luther has a maniacal plan involving time travel and alternate dimensions. Deadpool is just along for the ride - and the money.
1. Chapter 1

**Paradox**

Chapter 1:

Screwdrivers and drills, nails and bolts, scrap metal from broken-down cars, all of this cluttering a desk with Lex Luther seated before it, slouched and breathing deeply. He was working tirelessly, and had been for days, not sleeping or eating, ignoring all of his human needs. His eyes, after closer examination, had dark circles, emerald faded just slightly because of blood-shot whites. He worked feverishly, at a maddeningly slow pace, sure to be careful. Pain flushed over Lex's face, and he grunted angrily. Turning in his chair and holding out his left hand, his work was reveled. On his wrist was a metal contraption with a green-tinted screen about the size of a paperback book, It flashed numbers in a seemingly erratic sequence. Tubes of different colors stretched from under the metal brace to plug into the side of the screen, their uses unknown. Lex held back pained screams as the contraption yanked his arm upwards with illogical force, then the screen lit up, and he was gone.

"Mr. Luther, I have your tea-" Mercy dropped the plate she was holding, unable to maintain her usual cold composure. The cup of tea crashed and shattered on the floor, and the dark haired woman pulled her pistol from its hiding place on her thigh. There was no sign of struggle; in fact, there was no sign of _anything_.

"Security." Mercy barked, and multiple men rushed into the workroom. They searched tediously and wwith undying focus for any sign of their boss or what might have taken him. The only thing they found was the eft over scraps from Lx's work and a discarded suit jacket.

"I understand it now…" Lex whispered, sipping on the coffee that had been left on his desk and crossing his legs. He sat back and rolled his head in a small circle, loosening his neck muscles. Rubbing his hand with the other, Lex tried his best to relieve the ache but failed miserably. It was three O'clock in the morning, such an ungodly hour, and he knew that if he stayed up for much longer, he would be unable to accomplish his task.

The green eyed man reached over to a button below an old-fashioned speaker and pressed it weakly.

"Yes, sir, how can I help you?" The speaker asked, a stern and bitter voice on the other side.

"Get the car ready, I'm going home. And I want a massage scheduled for first thing tomorrow morning. I'm going to have a long week." Lex sighed and released the button, flopping back into his chair and smiling a weakly sadistic smile full of deceit and twisted optimism.

The next day, Lex woke up with a surge of energy. He didn't even drink any coffee until he reached his office. First, he tended to some paperwork that needed to be signed, then called Mercy for a coffee. After his coffee, he went to the masseuse, then returned to the office. It was ten in the morning when he finally told Mercy to hold all of his calls until he got out and slipped into his lab. From there, he called Mercy every once in a while for supplies, but other than that, he became scarce. It wasn't until Lex's bodyguard became worried and brought him some un-requested coffee that anybody went in or out of that room, and the security cameras told the same story, but Lex was nowhere to be found.


	2. Chapter 2

Chapter 2:

The power must have gone out sometime during the night, seeing as the little alarm clock that had never gone off was flashing steadily. It said 10:55 A.M., but it was dark out, so Wade stood and huffed angrily.

**Why are you even getting up? Not like you have anywhere to be.**

"True, but this flashing is driving me crazy…" Wade said, staggering groggily to the clock and gnashing buttons blindly.

_Nah, you're about as bad a crazy gets._

"And that makes me feel so much better." He was obviously perturbed already, perhaps from sleep deprivation, perhaps because of the cancerous masses under his flesh.

**You never do know.**

Finally, the clock was in his proper reach, and he pressed the button that made it possible to set the time.

"What time is it?" Wade asked, glancing around for some form of a clock to go off of. The kitchen timer had long ago burnt out, and Wade couldn't remember if he even had any watches, not to mention where they could be found.

**How am I supposed to know?**

_How's about you check the phone._

**Good idea. And the microwave.**

"The microwave is plugged into the wall, you idiot." Hissed the scarred man, that, since he was already up, was pulling his mask over his eyes.

"Gotta look cool while I search for that darn cell phone."

**You know it.**

"You shut up. I can make stupid, uncalled-for comments all on my own, thank you."

_The phone is in that pile of newspapers over there._

"See? I knew it was somewhere in this apartment."

Just then, there was a muffled ringing, and Wade, who - for all intensive purposes - was Deadpool in his underwear, dug through the pile of newspapers previously pointed out to him. There he found it, flashing a "Restricted Number" into his eyes. Squinting, the masked man pressed the green button and put the phone to his ear.

"Is this Deadpool?" Asked a man that sounded like a goon. Deadpool nodded, thinking it a funny prank to pull. The bold text also thought it was very humorous.

"Hello? Anybody there?" The stranger asked again, and Wade sighed.

"Only if you stop asking yes-or-no questions." He said after a short pause.

"What?" The goon asked in reply.

"Thank you. What do you want?" Now, with a bit more scratch to his voice, Deadpool managed to get a strange look from the calling man.

**You assume.**

What?

**You weren't there. How would you know?**

But I was there.

_How can you be both here and there?_

Question me again, I'll put you in the Box.

Anyways:

"Uhm… I'm calling you because of your special skills. I need you to make someone disappear like you were the one who did it. Understand?"

"You want me to take someone, and the entire building they're in, out."

"Precisely."

"Do you want to meet, or should we talk this over where the feds can hear it?"

"Come to the Sleeping Crow and talk to a waitress named Alice. She'll deposit your payment and tell you all of the details."

There was a click, then the other line was dead.

"Let's go. Maybe this 'Alice' is hot."

**I have a feeling you're never going to meet her.**

"Christ, don't be such a pessimist."

After Deadpool had showered and brushed his teeth, he dressed in his usual black-and-red attire and headed out the door. It was a chilly night with the moon just poking faintly out from behind the city smog. Somewhere a car honked, somewhere else a cat hissed. Just as always. Wade smiled like a child and skipped -

"What the Hell happened to my vehicle? I hope I'm not walking for the rest of this thing…"

- Just as merrily to The Sleeping Crow, a bar he knew well enough to get to on foot.

Just then, an alleyway he had walked past lit up, and Deadpool stopped in his tracks, walked backwards a few steps, then peered into the once-glowing space.

There a man slouched, leaning against a wall and writhing in pain. He was faced away from Wade, but looked as though he had been holding something, so the mercenary stepped, cautiously and with a gun at the ready, towards the heaving male.

"Hey, are you-"

"Don't touch me!" He shouted, and Deadpool backed away quickly.

There was a long silence that fell over the two, then the writhing man seemed to regain his composure.

"I told it to take me to Superman." Said the stranger, and he straightened out and turned towards Deadpool.

"Sorry, I don't know of anybody named Superman. You should return it. You got a warranty, right?"

**Clever, what you did there.**

"I know, right?"

"Can you fight?" The stranger looked at the ground, and Wade couldn't get a good look at him.

"Sure can." Deadpool barked almost defensively. "Wouldn't be wearin' the spandex if I couldn't."

"Let's go, then." Said the stranger, and he grabbed onto Deadpool's shoulder, holding his left arm into the air. A pained expression went over his face, and they were gone.


	3. Chapter 3

Chapter 3:

It was a mistake Lex regretted. With a little bit of kryptonite, Superman, or rather Clark Kent of Smallville, was simple to kill. All Lex had to do was find him, which was also a simple task, seeing as Superman gave off a unique power signature, child and adult alike. It baffled Lex that Superman, the all-powerful defender of Metropolis was actually Clark Kent, the meek and clumsy reporter that gave Lois looks of undeniable passion when she wasn't looking. It made sense, though. How was it possible that Superman always knew when Lois was in trouble? It was elementary: he never left her side.

Lex had succeeded in his task, but when he went back to the "present" time, something had gone wrong. Brainiac had taken over, and the entire planet was nothing but a slave house, all sentient beings bowing to a computer. When Brainiac had landed on Earth, there was nobody there to stop him, so he, and the Legion of Doom he had established, took over. There was another Lex there too, one that served the machine and was ranked higher than any other members of the Legion of Doom. It wasn't a bad existence for this Lex, as he had all the power and none of the responsibility, but this was a problem for our Lex.

Hiding from the scanning mechanisms and managing to go underground, Lex found that the more time he spent in this dimension, the worse the condition of his travel device became. He needed to stop himself from going back in time in the first place, but the travel device was draining him of his strength. Desperately and frantically, Lex typed a command into the matrix on his wrist and whispered a short prayer to a God he didn't believe in before being whisked away again, leaving nothing but a flicker of green light.

Lex went to another dimension, one without Brainiac and all of the chaos he had created, hopefully one with Superman, so he could bring the Man of Steel back with him to stop himself. It didn't work exactly the way he had planned it. Instead of teleporting to Metropolis and taking a probably reluctant caped hero to the almost-beginning, he wound up in a strange and totally different place. Instead of someone with the brains of a boy scout and the brawn of a dying star, he got a mentally unstable, rude, and immature man that called himself "Deadpool".


	4. Chapter 4

Chapter 4:

"Why are you so up-tight?" Deadpool asked, genuinely curious.

They were walking down a road that looked as though it hadn't been repaired since it's creation, and there was nothing but empty fields of various grains for miles in every direction. The corn and wheat seemed to stretch into the horizon, and it made Wade uneasy to note the un-ending feel of their surroundings.

"Where are we going, anyways?" He asked, and the stranger was still silent.

"You could at least tell me your name, or maybe the name of who I'm shooting."

"Reasonable, I suppose. I need you to kill a version of myself. I'm not planning on associating with you further after this task is complete, so you won't need my name." The explanation made Lex quite winded, and he was limping as he went, moving more slowly than either of them would have liked.

"Sounds complicated. So I'm shooting you?" Wade lifted his handgun and pointed it to Lex, getting nothing but an unamused glare from the millionaire.

"No, you dimwit. You're shooting a different version of me." With that, he hurried just a bit, ignoring the pain in his leg and straightening himself as they neared their destination.

"What am I getting out of this?" Deadpool asked suddenly.

"I'll pay you a good bit of money, if you succeed." Lex replied.

"How much money? Cash or credit? Will it be-"

"Will you shut up and keep moving?" Luther barked, and Wade, offended slightly, jogged to the other man's side.

When the two of them finally reached the overhanging sign labeled "Kent Farm", Lex sighed with quiet relief, and Deadpool, who had been muttering to himself, quieted and pulled his rifle from his shoulder, holding it up and looking through the scope. Both of them crouched, and Deadpool moved ahead, lowering his weapon, taking a few steps, then looking through the scope again.

"Watch for a flash of green light." Lex said, and Wade nodded in understanding.

**You sure are being quiet and composed today.**

"I'm not in the best mood, and I have a killer headache."

_That's never stopped you from making clever comments before._

"I know, but I have a bad feeling about this."

"What?" Lex asked, and Wade batted him away with his hand.

"I wasn't talking to you, baldy."

Just then, there was a flash of light near a barn with peeling paint. Deadpool readied his weapon and watched carefully for the bald man to step into view. He was there, just as promised, but just before he fired, a truck drove between wade and the old Lex, the driver catching the bullet instead of the millionaire. Both of the Lexs were terrified, the new Lex knowing just who Deadpool had killed, the old Lex hearing the gunshot and ducking for cover in the barn.

The truck with a now-dead driver plowed into the side of the bard, and a yelp was heard from inside the red building. A child of about ten rushed to the truck and pulled the bleeding and limp man from the driver's side window. The child sobbed loudly and huddled into the broken man, rocking both of them back and forth in woe.

"Who's the kid?" Deadpool asked over his shoulder, and Lex turned frantically and ran. The child had heard Wade, and was, in a split second, looming over the stooped man.

"You killed him!" The child shouted, and he grabbed Deadpool by the cuff of his costume, lifting him with one arm and glaring with tear-glistened eyes.

**I think we're screwed.**

"Hey, super-kid, I didn't mean to kill your-" Wade was cut off when the child landed a well-aimed punch into his jaw, displacing it and forcing several teeth out of their usual places.

Deadpool was flung in a spinning motion and out of the child's grip, landing hard on some wheat behind him. The kid jumped into the air and landed on Wade's gut, breaking several ribs and probably rupturing his intestines. He wailed on Deadpool with all his strength, destroying every bone in Wade's arms when they were lifted to protect his face, then fracturing his skull and breaking several vertebrae. Deadpool twitched, closed his eyes, coughed up what fluid and air his shattered wind-pipe would allow him, then died. Both of the Lexs were horrified with the display the Superman they knew could never have committed. The Lex that had been hiding in the barn realized what had happened when he saw a different version of himself run from the scene of the would-be crime, and teleported away, leaving the kryptonite behind to try and save his beloved self, just in case.

Our Lex was stumbling and wheezing as he ran, punching something into the time-travel device, wanting so badly to leave this reality he had perverted so badly. Perhaps if he traveled to his workroom just before the original teleportation occurred, he could prevent any of this from happening, but the "present" was unreachable, now that it had changed again. In an effort to reach home again, Lex pressed the travel button, and the device sputtered green light, suspended the green-eyed man for a moment, then died. He was stranded with a not-so-boy scout version of his nemesis just behind him, and his body wasn't going to last very long in this time, as the dimension rejected him as an intruder. His body guard was dead, on top of that. Lex had nowhere to go.


End file.
